How to Build a Winning Team

Winning is about leading your people. And about leading them in four very specific ways.

Winning Team, by Jack and Suzy Welch, via Newsweek Magazine

Figure Brad Trent; Jack (right) and Suzy Welch

If you travel around the how-to-succeed-in-business lecture circuit enough, which we both happen to do, you end up hearing a lot of interesting stuff about competitive strategy, disruptive technologies, resource allocation, asset management, and the like.

Interesting—and sort of beside the point. Because when it’s all said and done, a winning team wins because they have the best players and a coach who knows how to make the sum greater than the parts.

It’s as simple and as complicated as that. Simple because as soon as people hear that dictum, they typically mutter, “Oh, yeah.” It’s hardly a controversial notion that great players plus a great coach equal great performance.

Complicated, though, because actually doing it is so damn hard. We get distracted. The board wants a presentation, or a customer is getting pesky. Or we lose our nerve. Or we get tired. Whatever: something, anything, makes us forget that winning is about leading your people. And about leading them in four very specific ways.